The city’s housing program, which serves critical public needs, should not be subverted in this way,” the mayor said. “It is inconsistent with this administration’s priorities to allow wages to be manipulated at the cost of constructing the maximum number of affordable units we can finance.”

Bloomberg was upset about language in the bill that would force the Housing Preservation department to list information such as how developers were selected. Unions have argued that they are being unfairly shut out of building the developments because low bids are going to non-union contractors who use out of state and sometimes-illegal workers. This has a negative impact on the city’s economy by stripping valuable income from resident workers (which means they spend less in the city) and lowering the city’s tax revenue (because illegal workers don’t often pay taxes). As expected, current developers fought the bill while organized labor supported it.

We expected this and anticipate a full override by the City Council,” said a spokesman from the New York City District Council of Carpenters. Former Housing Deputy Commissioner Wendell Walters pleaded guilty in March to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. And months later, five others were arrested in connection with a corruption probe at the agency. Unions have pointed to the investigation, and to problems with quality of construction of some affordable projects, to bolster their argument for the bill.

City Council President and likely 2013 Mayoral candidate Christine Quinn promised an override. She called the Mayor’s decision “disappointing.”

“The city allocates hundreds of millions of dollars towards affordable housing development, and this bill will help to better assess the number of units created and preserved while shedding light on HPD’s process of selecting and evaluating developers, how the city pays for those projects and whether the developments are well built,” she said. “Contrary to criticism that the bill will be too costly, this legislation will, at minimal cost, bring transparency to the nation’s largest municipal developer of affordable housing.”

About the Author: Chaz Bolte

Chaz Bolte is a native of Pittsburgh, PA where he attended Slippery Rock University. He currently contributes to WePartyPatriots, Addicting Info, Secret Party Room, and Football Nation. You can follow him on Twitter @ChazBolte

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